In Rebirth, there were several silly exploits/strategies that were possible with saving and quitting. This led the racing community to outlaw saving and quitting for races. The exploits were as follows:

1. Duping of Krampus items

The Krampus pedestal appears before the death animation actually ends. If you save and quit in between when the pedestal appears and when the death animation ends, it would respawn Krampus but leave the pedestal.

2. Boss Rush steal

If you save and quit on the first few frames of touching a Boss Rush (or Mom) pedestal item, the remaining pedestal(s) will not despawn.

3. Alt+F4 to rewind and/or avoid death

Since the game only saves at the beginning of the floor or when initiating an in-game quit, you can Alt+F4 to rewind to the last save.

All 3 of these bugs have been fixed in the current build of Afterbirth. Thus, it may be time to reevaluate whether or not we want to keep the save and quit ban in general racing. Let's review some of the pros and cons.

Reasons for keeping the S+Q ban:

1. It is what everyone is used to. (Not the strongest argument, obviously.)

2. It prevents the use of resetting a Holy Mantle proc, which is situationally worth doing with 1 hit remaining, but is a lame strategy in general.

Reasons for removing the S+Q ban:

1. Without being able to save and quit, you get an automatic loss on a game crash, power outage, or the like. This is probably the biggest reason to remove the ban.

2. It allows the strategy of changing Greed to Super Greed. Depending on the floor and the strength of the current build, doing this may potentially waste time (if you don't plan to visit any more shops), so the decision of whether to waste the time to do it or not is a strategic choice.

3. It allows the strategy of proccing the delayed stats from The Small Rock. Depending on the current build, the speed down may be less important than the tears up, so the decision of whether to waste the time to do it or not is a strategic choice.

4. It allows for less restrictive use of Mega Blast. Depending on the situation, there may be reason to prematurely end the blast, so the decision of whether to waste the time to do so or not is a strategic choice.

5. It allows for RexmoreOP's basement block clip strategy in racing, which introduces strategic depth into the game. For example, depending on the strength of the item, it may or may not be worth it to full clear the floor to look for an extra bomb. (Technically, the block clip is already allowed in racing, but is generally unfeasible since without saving and quitting it requires the use of some form of teleportation.)

Weighing these pro's and con's, I think that we should probably remove the save and quit ban, but of course I am not 100% convinced either way. Let's discuss this, as I'm sure I've probably missed something. =p

Taku couldn't find his password so I am posting his response for him:

Takumashii - Today at 4:44 PM I haven't raced in a while, but here's my two cents - S&Q, along with a handful of other strategies such as mouse use for epic fetus, co-op babies, etc are barriers to new racers getting into the game, and create a weird artifical tier system where some people are willing to learn to use them effectively, and others (the majority of all but the most competitive racers, I would guess) who wouldn't bother. It sets up a sort of have/have-not scenario that would keep me from returning to the racing scene for absolute certain.

See photo for proof that no content was changed:

I vote to lift the ban. I think it adds small, yet interesting strategies that aren't too complicated to understand or learn and aren't outside the realm of "fairness" (like the old reasons for the ban).

poop poop fart?

Was it ever figured out why you sometimes couldn't continue after exiting the game? It'd cause an auto-loss in that scenario, and in my experience at least, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence.

Lift the ban and let my people go!! I love new and interesting strats as long as they are not game breaking

In direct response to Taku's opinion:

I do not think the rules around racing should be geared to new entrants, nor do I think s&q is too advanced of a strategy to be intimidating/restrictive to entrants. The rules should be formed to provide more strategy depth (increasing competitiveness), while maintaining the 'spirit' of the game.

Now more in general:

The original s&q ban was formed to avoid the game breaking exploits that ruined the spirit of the game. If these exploits no longer remain in the game, then S&Q increases the tools available to racers, providing more separation of advanced racers (we want better people to win more often so skill becomes more valuable than RNG...right?).

I think one of the most significant reasons to remove the ban is for racers who have an uncontrollable crash of the game, which results in a significant competitive disadvantage mid-run. At minimum, I think the rule should be revised to permit unintended continues.

tODD

@Takumashii

I agree with you to some extent. However, describing it as a "tier system" may be a bit overblown.

I think you'd agree that at it's core, Isaac is a very complicated game. There are hundreds of items and over a thousand item synergies that racers have to learn and memorize. Not to mention thousands of individual rooms, several with their own specific strategy that you must also learn and memorize. It is important to put this in perspective: the basement block clip in particular is so esoteric that it only comes into play once in hundreds of runs.

My underlying point is this. If we ask the question: "Do save and quit strategies make the game more complicated/difficult?" The answer would be yes. But only a very, very marginal yes. As an upcoming racer, it is more efficient to learn other things than strategies that may or may not even be useful, like respawning Greed.

Overall, I think you may be overestimating the power of the small number of save and quit strategies. They are all relatively minor things that don't really give a racer that much of an advantage.

@thisguyisbarry

I'm fairly certain that it has something do with co-op babies. Since they currently remain banned in racing, I suspect that this will never be an issue.

I think s&q ban should be lifted myself, since gamebreaking bugs that involved that mechanic got patched. To occurance of the bug where you can't continue game after exiting, I honestly don't know what causes it, it never happened to me but I saw barry experiencing it a lot in his character runs.

@Krakenos, @thisguyisbarry -- Using a co-op baby disables continue for sure. Not certain if there are other causes.

As for the S&Q, I think it adds another layer of strategy to racing, which I like. I'm a newer racer, and had never even played BOI before February of this year. While there is some knowledge required to exploit things like block clipping, I don't see the difference for newer players between this and black market clips. Neither are intuitive, but one is already allowed. The save and quit part isn't the technically hard to grasp part in my opinion. Pause buffering is also implicitly allowed (or at least I've seen people do it in races and haven't heard of it being disallowed), which is another un-intuitive mechanic for newer players.

Competing in races is just hard as a newer player, and by the time most players are competitive, I think these mechanics are fairly well understood (assuming they participate in the community at all). Just my two cents, anyway.

Consensus here seems pretty set on permitting s&q. How do we pull the trigger on that?

The rules were updated today officially by Sluip/Peachy.

http://www.speedrunslive.com/races/game/#!/isaacafterbirth/1

1. The "No continuing allowed" --> removed
2. "No CTRL+ALT+DEL to avoid deaths" --> "No rewinding to the last save using Task Manager or other means"

Good luck, have fun.

By the way, Dea1h and I discovered today that you can dupe Krampus pedestals in the skull room with save+quit if you get lucky enough to spawn a Host. Fairly sure this wasn't known before. (?) But definitely situationally useful on bad builds.

Edit - You can't dupe Angels pedestals in any way AFAIK.